Re: Naturalism, arising in the 19 th century as a literary response to Dar
[#permalink]
26 Sep 2025, 03:05
Naturalism, arising in the 19 th century as a literary response to Darwin's account of evolution, focused on describing everyday reality but differed from realism in its attempts to provide a "scientific" foundation for its depictions of characters, stressing the influence of environment and heredity upon the individual psyche.
Complex sentence but quite important: It says that naturalism is the answer to Darwin's theory about evolution. HOWEVER, it is related to realism but contrary to the realism itself - which probably has its roots only in the observation of the environment - naturalism is like realism + science + human behavior
Émile Zola, in particular, saw his craft as an extension of the scientific method into the domain of art.
Science + art = realism (maybe) Here the passage is not that clear in its jump
The 19 th century, perhaps in opposition to naturalism, saw the rise of the Decadent movement, embracing artifice over nature in writing, championed by Zola's erstwhile protégé, Joris-Karl Huysmans.
Here we have the rising of ANOTHER movement (how many? ). The Decadent movement: Ossian poems, black sabbath and blah blah blah
The protagonist of his masterpiece, Á rebours (literally, Against the Grain, but more commonly translated as Against Nature), removes himself from society-viewing it as the product of a nature long surpassed by human ingenuity—and surrounds himself exclusively with art, perfume, literature, and technology.
Joris-Karl Huysmans. wrote something huge> Against Nature> man is or himself is not the product of the environment but instead by human tendency or pleasures> art, perfume and so on
Really weird passage